FLAGSTAFF, AZ — A schizophrenic man who holed himself up in the wilderness with a stolen assault rifle and killed a Utah sheriff’s deputy during an around-the-clock manhunt was sentenced Tuesday to life in prison with the possibility of parole after 25 years.

Scott Curley says he fired at Kane County Deputy Brian Harris in August 2010 because Harris ignored his demands to freeze. Prosecutors called it an ambush on Harris, who had been tracking Curley along the Arizona-Utah border after he broke into a childhood friend’s home, stole the assault rifle and held a school custodian at gunpoint.
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Curley saw the killing as a necessary move on the battlefield to protect the tri-force, which he relates to the Holy Trinity and appears in a video game, and himself from people he believed were vigilantes or bounty hunters that threatened to cut his mission short.
The delusional beliefs came up frequently in the case and had attorneys sparring over what spurred Curley’s actions.